Autumn news: short-toed eagle tracking, new posters and new paper

It is now possible to follow on our website (in the PROJECTS page) the migration of two short-toed eagles: Egidio, tagged in the 2013 as a juvenile and now adult, and his son Michele, tagged this year in July.

In this picture by Victor Muñoz, you can see Michele in Basilicata, just a few days before the departure.

Moreover, three posters from the recent Italian Ornithological Congress in Naples have been uploaded. They deal with the migration of raptors and bee-eaters at the Strait of Messina, and on the use of rubbish dumps by black kites.

Finally, you can find in the papers page also a new study to which we collaborated focused on the migration of the lesser kestrel at a pan-European scale.

News from the Strait of Messina

A new fieldwork season began at the Strait of Messina. After a week of observations, ca. 1500 raptors were counted, mostly Black Kites. In the picture (by Michele Cento), a flock of Black Kites roosting yesterday at sunset, very close the observation post.

Two new papers out now!

In the first one we analyze for the first time three autumn and three spring migrations of an adult European Honey Buzzard belonging to the population breeding in Central-eastern Europe tracked by satellite telemetry.

Agostini N, Prommer M, Váczi M, Panuccio M 2019. Repeated large scale loop migrations of an adult European Honey Buzzard. Avocetta 43: 13-21.

In the other one we investigate the composition and abundance of wintering raptors in Rome.

Panuccio M, Foschi F, Todini A, Baldi A, Dominicis N, De Filippis P, Casini S, De Pisa G, Palmeri A 2019. Better to stay downtown or in the countryside? Raptors wintering in urban and rural protected areas of Rome (Central Italy). Avocetta 43: 67-73.

Michele: a young short-toed eagle tagged with GPS

Some days ago, exactly 30 days after Michele's death, we tagged with a satellite transmitter this young short-toed eagle, that could only be called Michele. One of its parents is Egidio, a short-toed eagle that we have been following since its birth and that this year bred successfully for the first time. We hope that Michele will soon fly across European and African skies! We thank Ornis Italica for the collaboration.

New papers: radar software an wintering raptors

Two papers on very different arguments have been recently published: one deals with the Hypatia-trackRadar softaware calibrated and used to monitor raptor migration in the Strait of Messina, and the other one on the wintering raptors in the islands of Crete and Sicily.

Capotosti, S., Scacco, M., Nelli, L., Dell'Omo, G., Panuccio, M. 2019. Hypatia-trackRadar: A software for animal tracking using marine surveillance radars. Ecological Informatics 53: in press.




Panuccio M., Agostini N., Nelli L., Andreou G., Xirouchachis S. 2019. Factors shaping distribution and abundance of raptors wintering in two large Mediterranean islands. Community Ecology 20: 93-103.





You can download them from our page

Goodbye Michele, have a nice flight

Tuesday 18 June Michele left us after a week of suffering. The funeral ceremony took place on Thursday 20 June in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.
 Michele - as he required - was buried in Calabria, in Gioiosa Ionica.

News from the Strait of Messina

April has been a hard month at the Strait of Messina this year with many days of bad weather and strong southern wind. But in the end in these last days there have been the first waves of migrating Honey buzzards with more than a thousand of individuals counted by both watchpoints. Let's keep the fingers crossed for the next days!

New papers out now

Two other papers by Medraptors have been published. The first one describes the moult pattern of Marsh harriers during autumn migration at the Strait of Messina and was realized by analysing tons of pictures made during autumn 2016. 

The second one was made in the field of the activity of the Natural History Museum of Crete that has been monitoring the colonies of Eleonora's falcons since a long time. We used a broad-band marine radar to detect factors influencing the flight altitude of falcons in proximity of a colony located on a small rocky islet.

• Ramirez J., Panuccio M. 2019. Flight feather moult in Western Marsh Harriers during autumn migration. Avian Research 10:7.
• Xirouchakis S.M., Panuccio M. 2019. Hunting altitude of Eleonora's falcon (Falco eleonorae) over a breeding colony. Journal of Raptor Research 53(1): 56–65.

News from the Strait of Messina

In the last week we started the monitoring activity at the Strait of Messina. We had a couple of great days of migration with hundreds of raptors and several days of bad weather. In this period the most abundant species is the Marsh Harrier but there are many other species passing together, such as Sparrowhawks, Black kites, Pallid harriers, Booted eagles and of course the Short-toed Eagle of the picture below (by Carmelo Fiore).

A new season of migration monitoring

The project Strait of Messina Bird Observatory is going on and there are several news for this 2019. The first news is that LIPU BirdLife Italy joined the project. The second news is that our observations are financed by the Lipu Uk Delegation, Mava Foundation (for anti-poaching aspects) and Calabria Regional Authority together with a side project of wildlife management to restore a small wetland at the site and setting nest boxes for Peregrine Falcons (POR FESR - FSE 2014/2020). 

The next 15th March we will start the field activity with the raptor count from the continental (calabrian) side of the Strait of Messina. We are going to use two watchpoints simultaneously, one is the same we used since the project has started, the other is located close to the coast. The two points are parellel to each other in respect to the migratory flow. Radar equipment will be used also this year. Another watchpoint  it will be placed in side Sicilian of the Strait of Messina (Dinnammare), for the purpose of predicting poaching in Calabria. We invite volunteers that would like to join our activity to write us an email. Accomodation for volunteers is free. The activity will go on until the 25th of May. 

New papers out now!

In the last weeks three different papers came out, all related to bird migration. You can find titles here following. The first shows the results of a radar research analysing the effect of fog on the intensity of bird migration and it was written in close collaboration with the Flight Animal Group of the University of Haifa and it is published on International Journal of Biometeorology. 

On the other hand, we started to collect data for the paper published on Ornithological Science years ago in the framework of a fieldwork promoted by LIPU-BirdLife Italy. In this paper it is analysed the variation of the flight altitude of honey buzzards facing the open sea during spring migration.

The last paper is a letter on Journal of Raptor Research communicating the amazing observation results of a short survey in Northern Iran where there is an almost unknown migratory bottlenecks of great relevance.

• Panuccio M., Dell'Omo G., Bogliani G., Catoni C., Sapir N. 2019. Migrating birds avoid flying through fog and low clouds. International Journal of Biometeorology https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-018-01656-z.

• Panuccio M., Gustin M., Lucia G., Bogliani G., Agostini N. 2019. Flight altitude of migrating European Honey Buzzards facing the open sea. Ornithological Science 18: 49-57.

• Panuccio M., Ghafouri B., Nourani E. 2018. Is the slope between the Alborz Mountains and Caspian Sea in Northern Iran a bottleneck for migrating raptors? Journal of Raptor Research 52(4): 530-533.

New website online!

Our new website is online! Check it now! You will find lot of informations and pics.